


Love Left To Spare

by Birdie_Lo_Green



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Brienne Needs Tissues, Except Jaime Lannister, F/M, Instead She Has Avenging Angel Giant Men, Jaime Lannister Has Issues, Jon Is Emotional, Morning After, Post-Battle of Winterfell | Final Battle Against the White Walkers, Sandor Hates Everyone, Season/Series 08, Tormund Loves Everyone, Tyrion Prods Him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:02:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27082369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Birdie_Lo_Green/pseuds/Birdie_Lo_Green
Summary: After sleeping together, Brienne hadn't expected to see Jaime ever again.He forgot one thing: friends don't let friends be one night stands.
Relationships: Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth, Sandor Clegane & Tormund Giantsbane, Tormund Giantsbane/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 4
Kudos: 52





	Love Left To Spare

**Author's Note:**

> So this is clearly what should have happened after Brienne begged Jaime to stay and he came over all self-loathing and left anyway. Much thanks to dreaminghour for enduring screenshots of this when it was just notes typed into my phone at 2am. Gratitude also for assisting with necessary technical edits.

In the days following the great battle of Winterfell, its victors wished themselves as dead as their enemies. Brienne had stopped drinking well before dawn, and still her world felt wrong. She had heard tales of the next morning, how the shift from maiden to woman was spiritual as well as physical. If anything she felt more at risk of breaking something now than she had the night before. 

All around her others walked on eggshells, navigating the after effects of a hangover, the slow healing of battle wounds or the phantom limb sensation of a grievous loss. Brienne could identify with all of them. She did not however want company. Her appetite was often missing in action long after a battle. Still, she had imagined sharing breakfast in bed, staying tangled together in the sheets until the evening.

“My lady?” A young northman was staring up at Brienne. Head wrapped in stained gauze, his uninjured eye was bloodshot and swollen. “You’re wanted in the infirmary. Lannister’s asking for yer.” 

The imp had suggested their drinking game and opened with the first of many personal statements. The last of which had been: “You’re a virgin.” It was his prying that had prompted Brienne to leave the table. Why Jaime had followed would always be a mystery. The most likely option was too much alcohol. The least likely was love...and his actions thereafter had disproven any such illusion. Brienne couldn’t fathom what more games Tyrion could want to play with her. Who knew the inner workings of a Lannister better than the smallest amongst them? 

* * *

The hospital ward was an assault of sounds, sights and smells, reminding Brienne of all they had suffered. Many had lost their lives and burned, and those who survived remained forever changed by the experience. She felt suitably foolish for indulging in self pity when she had escaped with a mere knock to her dignity. 

The boy with the eye patch beckoned Brienne to the end of the ward. The bed before them was filled top to bottom with a beaten man, eyes blackened and lip split, one armed and wheezing.

“What is he doing here?” Brienne asked the Maester. 

“The Kingslayer was found this way in the early hours of the morning, my lady.” Jaime had sustained more injuries in the last few hours than during the entirety of their battle with the dead. The Maester asked: “Would anybody have sought to harm him?” and Brienne smiled. 

“Plenty,” she breathed. The sting of Jaime leaving felt as fresh and swollen as his face. “He’s never been popular with northerners.”

“This weren’t my men.” King Jon was standing behind Brienne, looking as exhausted and betrayed as she felt. “Lannister fought alongside em.” 

“But we are not one of them and will never be accepted as such.” Tyrion was sitting at his brother’s side. King Jon stared at him as though winded by the imp’s assertion. “If this is how northerners treat foreigners, our queen would be wise to head to King’s Landing immediately.”

“Your brother’s horse was packed,” Jon explained, “Where was he headed?” 

The night just past Jaime had lain in bed beneath Brienne. She’d felt held and safe in a way she’d never allowed, not since leaving home, not since her mother had died. Now she felt weighed down by men’s petty misgivings. She wanted to lie with Jaime again, and despite her despair that he had left, she couldn’t condone how somebody had hurt him. 

“Perhaps he was going back where he belonged,” Tyrion offered and King Jon was silenced again, offended by something hidden between the imp’s words. He looked across at Jaime and shook his head, remembering how little he cared for him. Striding from the ward, parting the crowds of men and concerned women, the king’s cloak billowed out behind him. 

“Or perhaps,” Tyrion addressed Brienne, “Jaime was making a quick exit in the face of rejection.” Brienne looked at the imp rather than the patient they were discussing.

“We both know he’s never known that particular humiliation. Men like him simply have things handed to them.”

“ _Handed_?” Tyrion asked, brow arching, “I don’t even know where his hand is. More likely Jaime had one taste of what unconditional love was like and simply confused support with suffocation. Lions can be cowardly, my lady.”

“But lions cannot be leashed nor led.” Brienne repeated what she had said to herself. “He’s welcome to his freedom, to trying and failing to save your sister.”

“Perhaps he is the stupidest Lannister,” Tyrion agreed, “But what kind of man would he be to turn his back on family?” Brienne blinked back tears. She had cried all she was going to cry for him. Tyrion looked up at her, eyes swimming with compassion and imparted the wisdom he was well known for. “A single child from an island could never grasp the concept. My siblings are neighbouring nations. War may separate them, but their borders will always be mixed up in one another. Take it from me: you will always be a foreigner. Enjoy your visit and carry on elsewhere. Let making love be enough and forget to regret that there is no love left to spare.” 

* * *

Jaime groaned his sister’s name. Tyrion bowed his head in shame and Brienne removed herself from the ward. The crowds did not part as they’d done for the king and so she weaved her way between men, maesters, women and children. Stopping for air in the courtyard, she barrelled into the only man she could meet eye to eye.

“My apologies, Clegane,” Brienne insisted, still on the brink of tears, “Excuse me.”

“Afraid I can’t,” he said, holding her in place. Brienne glanced down at his hands which were badly bruised and with brown blood or mud crusted beneath the nails. Behind him sitting on a loaded wagon was the wildling. The white of his outfit made the state of Tormund’s hands all the more blinding.

“What...happened?” Brienne asked and the Hound removed his hands before she could reach for them. “You quarrelled with...Jaime?” She could barely say his name. Clegane noticed as much and scoffed disdainfully.

“He barely saw us coming,” Tormund explained, and she could imagine the pair of them riding him down, “But _I saw him_ and I heard you... _begging_ him to stay and I couldn’t forgive how he ran away.”

Tormund had wanted to love Brienne and fight Jaime since the moment he’d set eyes on them. Avenging Brienne by beating Jaime was as close as he’d ever get to accomplishing either desire. Clegane had probably wanted to punch Jaime for as long as he’d known him. Brienne was as touched by the sentiment as she was disgusted by the brutality. Instead of encouraging them, she gripped the pommel of her sword and said:

"My honour is in no need of defending." Tormund looked away, pained by the reminder that she and Jaime had been intimate. She doubted the wildlings cared much for virgins.

"No," Clegane remarked, eyes locked on Oathkeeper, "Your honours gone and the con man you handed it off to got what he was after for a bargain." Though she agreed, Brienne could not hold up virginity as some great virtue to be traded and bought. It took no skill to maintain, could be taken by force and said no more about the purity of a person than the time they spent in prayer. The most honourable individual she had ever met was a mother of five. Tormund met Brienne’s eyes, vowing: "A good kicking is what a thief deserves.”

"I wasn’t _stolen_ from you, Tormund.” Brienne stepped towards him where he was sitting on the wagon and he leaned back, staring up at her in admiration. “People are not property."

The Wildling did not know her and she did not know him. He saw only what she projected like the armour worn for her protection. Without shared history, Tormund was no better than any man lusting after the body of a beautiful woman. 

Rising from the wagon, he stood too close as was his habit, and held a hand behind his back, perhaps as he’d seen King Jon do when he was talking.

"Wildlings know nothing ‘bout owning shit,” he said, waving his free hand as he spoke, “We don't kneel and we never beg. We go to our deaths with pride. Your heart…” His battered hand stopped over Brienne’s chest. Flat and open, it hovered as though testing the heat of something. “ _Your heart died_ and Lannister let it." Tormund’s hand curled into a fist and dropped to his side. His green eyes met Brienne’s blue and she understood that his anger was for the two of them. 

For the first time in all the months they’d known one another, she truly looked at Tormund: took in the fine lines, the dusting of freckles, the ghost of brows and lashes so like hers and that stare of his which could flit from intimidation to tenderness as quickly as a robin. Often Brienne had noticed that Tormund stared straight through anyone that wasn’t Jon. Wildlings recognised no monarchy and yet he was looking up at Brienne like she was his King. 

“If you were mine,” Tormund swore, “I would have stayed. Neither dragons or the dead couldn drag me away.” 

* * *

The hand Tormund had been holding behind his back dropped and in it was Jaime's golden one. Taking Brienne’s arm, he pressed the stolen glove into her palm. With one last look, he squeezed her hand, nodded at her and then Clegane, and charged out of the yard. 

"Some people," Clegane began as though insulting the wildling, "No fucking idea what's good for them. Others know it all too well and they run in the other direction. Your idiot Kingslayer will recover, but he won't be running nowhere for a long while." 

Nothing Brienne wanted to say could correctly express her muddled sentiments. Choice so rarely came into things. On a mountaintop in the Vale, she hadn’t wanted to fight Clegane to the death, but it had taught her much about rage. In the courtyard of Winterfell, she’d wanted Jaime to stay, but he’d left anyway and it had taught her everything about resilience. 

An Unsullied limped by them headed in the direction of the infirmary. Brienne gave him Jaime’s hand with orders to deliver it to Tyrion. Clegane smiled and offered a helpful suggestion:

“Might as well give up that blade whilst you’re in the habit of giving away valuable shit.”

" _Clegane_." The burned man looked at Brienne as though he wanted an order or a treat. 

In that moment she understood that of all the awful things Clegane had done, beating Jaime to a bloody pulp barely ranked amongst them, and he was proud to have done it. 

"You're the kind of hound that needs putting down, you know that?" Clegane nodded and laughed, walking with Brienne out of the yard.

"The Wildling wanted to fucking kill him,” he explained, “Lannister's lucky I was there."

"I imagine luck is the last thing he'll be feeling. _Hang on_ \- what were you doing up so late and _outside_ of the keep?”

“Same as that cunt,” Clegane confessed, “I was leaving a woman.”

“Oh,” Brienne sighed, aware of the identity of the love of his life. “So you and-”

“ _No_. Unlike the Kingslayer, I know when a woman can do better.” Brienne did not believed the choice was Clegane’s to make, but he was clearly stubborn. “Glad I saw Lannister,” he carried on, “Cos I’ve no fucking doubt you’d have ridden me down and bashed my head in til I was dead this time.”

“Certainly and this time I’d have regretted absolutely nothing.” Clegane smiled at her.

“What did you regret before?” he asked.

“Oh just killing such an ardent defender of innocent young women.”

“Fuck off,” Clegane barked as was his habit, and then announced: “I’m starving.”

 _“Thank you,”_ Brienne said at last and Clegane nodded. Looking down at his bruised knuckles rather than at her, he had learned to accept gratitude with grace. Parting ways at the doors of the Great Hall, Brienne offered Clegane some words of advice: “Trust you remember that what a woman _deserves_ in life is exactly what she _wants_. Your only duty is to do justice to such affection.”

**Author's Note:**

> I doubt Sandor wanted any part of this hot mess and just jumped in to stop Tormund being put on trial for murder. Of course he still got a few kicks in for old times sake. Sandor's not a party pooper.


End file.
